Saintly Thoughts

When I think of humanity, when I think on the human condition, when I think of myself...all that I can really feel is sadness and terror. Look at what we have done, look at what is expected. All the paths to God and/or Enlightenment are strewn with a thousand obstacles, and the paths themselves are not clear. Those who despair and revel are damned. Those who despair and pray and weep are damnable, for who amongst them is not overcome by his fear, not for God, but for his fellow man? Perhaps that is the answer to humanities's malaise; that we have unlearned our terror of God and learned instead our terror of the Godlike man. But who can tell which subjective terror is worse? If one fears God, might not one kill and insult and burn his brother if (believed) asked by God to do so? If one fears but man himself, then what is to convince him that he should not rise up in his own strength and slay his fellows lest they should flay him? Either way, the brutality of logic leads to bloodshed and despair. The path of prudence is the path of the middle way; the path which wends betwixt the hard logics of relativistic doubt and tyrannic certainty. That way which forgets neither the fear and the love of the divine nor the love of his neighbor. There must be room in the heart of man for both, lest he lose the love for the One and the other and ultimately, himself. Thus the wiseman sometimes will play the fool, sometimes the nihilist, sometimes the doubter, sometimes the faithful, sometimes the fanatic. But wait, does not the foolish man also act thus, buffeted from side to side as his fancy takes him without introspection and a guiding rule of reason? Yes, I respond, the fool and the wiseman are indistinguishable from one another except to the wise. Who then is wise, and how may they (and we) know that they are wise rather than foolish? There are signs and signals, I respond, but in the end, no man is always wise and the fool may sometimes stumble upon wisdom when the wise fail. Is there then no hope for wisdom, you ask? Wisdom will not save us until all are wise, I respond. So no, we will not be saved by wisdom. We must seek out wisdom, but ultimately, we must look elsewhere. We must look to foolishness; those hidden terrors creeping up out of the depths of our subconscious. Embrace your childhood fears: the bogeyman, the ogre, the demon, the devil and hellfire! Embrace them and look on them with terror! Then turn away. May grace enter upon your soul in such a moment.

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